back to article Girls! Girls! Girls! Intel brags about diversity push, Silicon Valley tells itself it's doing great

One year on from a public promise, Intel has the rare distinction of actually coming good on its gender equality issues. On Wednesday, the chip giant announced it had surpassed its goal of 40 per cent of new hires being female, taking on 43.1 per cent women in 2015: a near doubling of its previous year's tally. The company …

  1. DXMage

    Now for code war of the sexs

    Now we can have a code war of the sexs to see who can make the most secure, bug free and efficient code.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    to see who can make the most secure, bug free and efficient code.

    Well, we men went first, and we've not set the bar very high, have we?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the simple fact that men and women are different and like doing and are good at different things is nowhere to be seen.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all bullshit.

    Women just don't appear to be interested on the whole, I suspect that the news and TV media has a lot more to do with that then anything else.

    I've probably seen 200 odd CVs while recruiting, not including when we took on placement students that must of been another 100 or so. Out of those I'd say five were female. We've interviewed two, recruited two, one left after a week because she wanted to be more management. As to men, I think I've interviewed 50 (including phone interviews) or so and hired four. As to the student placements, I think we got one female apply, didn't recruit her.

    If the CVs aren't there what are you supposed to do? It'll obviously be easier for the big names as everyone wants to work for them so the further down the food chain you go the harder it tends to get to recruit at all, let alone to a crib sheet of "diversity."

    1. Youngone Silver badge

      @AC

      In my (admittedly limited) experience you're right. Women (gross generalization time) are not that keen on the technical, but learn a little bit so that they can get into the management side.

      I've had a couple of female managers, one was great, one was a totally out of her depth and compensated by being a psycho.

      About the same hit rate that I've had with male managers now I think about it.

  5. MondoMan
    WTF?

    Article error?

    According to the article, Intel has brought "... the total number of women in its workforce to 35 per cent, and minorities to 12 per cent." However, the "A Snapshot of our People" slide shown indicates that minorities comprise a bit more than 46% of the total Intel workforce. Apparently, some minorities are more equal than others...

  6. MondoMan
    Facepalm

    Proof of concept?

    If there were really a large pool of interested female software/hardware engineers going un/underemployed because of some pervasive "bro" bias, you would think that someone could pretty easily start a company aimed at hiring these folks, and end up with a superior staff at a lower price.

    As far as I know, this simple proof-of-concept of the existence of a problem hasn't been done, which naturally brings into question the very existence of such a problem.

    I don't understand the idea that every company or other sub-grouping of society needs to match the population structure of society in general. There doesn't seem to be any societal advantage in it, and it would certainly be very disruptive to society if half or more of all our companies, nonprofits, sports teams, etc had to be totally reorganized to reflect some sort of "social justice" employment quotas.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Proof of concept?

      I too felt like channeling Tim Worstall for a bit:

      It seems there are a few possibilities here:

      1. As you mention, there could be a few companies that are making massive profits off their cheap female labor.

      2. There's lots of unemployed tech women out there that just can't get a job (high unemployment tends to lead to #1).

      3. The extra skilled labor could have moved into another field: i.e. management, banking, real estate. Anything where they were making good money and felt valued.

      4. The extra skilled labor is not actually part of the labor force. I.e. they decided to be stay-at-home moms, retired, or they're sponging off a relative.

      5. The statistics are just wrong.

      I will give the companies credit that they aren't actually trying to get 50% of their engineering labor to be women in the next couple years. They were focusing on getting up to par with the diversity of the *skilled* labor. There is a benefit to having a diverse set of employees: They bring different problem solving strategies and background knowledge, including cultural understanding (which a lot of these companies seem to seriously lack.) This not only helps with not pissing off your potential customers, it also helps with developing products that appeal to more people, and helps produce a wider range of potential ideas to develop or implement.

      1. MondoMan

        Re: Proof of concept? @AC

        I agree that "There is a benefit to having a diverse set of employees: ..." --- the silly part is assuming that race/sex are valid proxies for intellectual diversity, and are indeed so important that they are the only measures that society should care about.

        One would think that something like Republican/Democrat/Green/Socialist Alternative party membership would be a much more useful proxy for social engineering.

        1. jonathanb Silver badge

          Re: Proof of concept? @AC

          I don't know anout the US, but in the UK, the vast majority of candidates would tell you they don't belong to any political party, and would either give a non-specific answer or flat-out refuse to answer if you asked them about voting intentions.

          1. MondoMan

            Re: Proof of concept? @jonathanb

            Social engineering and justice is too important to be stopped by petty civil liberties -- presumably, the government would just pass a law like the one that forces people to disclose their encryption passwords and similarly force employees to disclose detailed political profiles to their HR departments. There's always MI-5 and GCHQ waiting in reserve...

    2. Dr Scrum Master

      Re: Proof of concept?

      If there were really a large pool of interested female software/hardware engineers going un/underemployed because of some pervasive "bro" bias, you would think that someone could pretty easily start a company aimed at hiring these folks, and end up with a superior staff at a lower price.

      You mean like "Steve" Shirley did in the 1960s/1970s?

      1. MondoMan

        Re: Proof of concept? @DCM

        Yes, exactly! I hadn't known of this (I'll blame it on living in the distant colonies) -- thanks for mentioning it!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Proof of concept?

      "If there were really a large pool of interested female software/hardware engineers going un/underemployed because of some pervasive "bro" bias, you would think that someone could pretty easily start a company aimed at hiring these folks, and end up with a superior staff at a lower price.

      As far as I know, this simple proof-of-concept of the existence of a problem hasn't been done, which naturally brings into question the very existence of such a problem."

      IIRC, it was tried. They found there weren't enough women to fill all the posts so had to resort to hiring men to fill in. Can't recall why they folded in the end - but they did have a good go as a business. Now this was some years ago and things have moved on now, so a new start-up might succeed...

      ... however...

      ...it'd also be encouraging sexual discrimination in hiring practices that could attract hostility and law suits. That might put people off trying it these days.

  7. Steven Roper

    A snapshot of our people

    Human Beings: 100%.

    Anything else is irrelevant.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A snapshot of our people @Steven

      Amen to that.

      The sad thing is that we've lost, and offensive discrimination in the name of social engineering has won.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: A snapshot of our people

      Why are you discriminating other kinds of beings?

      Also, I'm not sure all of the beings in the company I work for are human...

  8. Aslan

    We've got the title of the song in the headline, but not the official music video? Well here's the uncensored work it refers too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1S0Bvz3NHo . What can I say, I appreciate all the hard work the girlies put in.

    1. timthorn

      I think you mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPGiLsdWZdo

  9. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    You're hired because of your gender/ethnicity...

    ... nothing else.

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: You're hired because of your gender/ethnicity...

      I wonder how many at intel are now having this confidence issue. I would prefer to be hired based on my skills, not what is between my legs nor the country I was born in.

  10. tiggity Silver badge

    Analyse your data carefully

    Whatever classification system used will be over broad, you have to be very careful that your stats make sense.

    If we look at someone categorised as a White UK female, there is a huge difference in life advantage between someone who went to a top public school & someone who went to a "bog standard comprehensive".

    e.g. the top of the Conservative party in the UK, lacking in women, minorities, but its over representation of white males are not very representative of the huge majority of white males in the country, your "average" UK white make not really represented in that cohort.

  11. SimonC

    Boys! Boys! Boys! Intel brags about pushing men out

    On Wednesday, the chip giant announced it had surpassed its goal of 40 per cent of new hires not being male, rejecting double the number of qualified men in their previous year.

    Seriously though, enforced gender quotas are demeaning, undermine people who are qualified, produce people that cannot be respected or trusted, and so much more.

    The fact that professional victim and misandrist Anita Sarkeesian is connected to their diversity push should be all the alarm bells you need. If intel wants to get more women in tech it needs to encourage more qualified women to apply and study tech, but it MUST STILL HOLD THEM TO THE SAME STANDARD AS MEN.

    Otherwise it's this great thing we call sexism, where we hire people based on the size of their chest and what goods they have between their legs.

    Which oddly, women don't tend to like very much.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong solution to the problem?

    I think that part of the problem is that some folk simplisticly think "there are so few women in IT because there's too many places with female-hostile corportae cultures, and the only solution I can think of is enforced hiring of more women (presumably women won't create a women-hostile working environment)".

    The trouble is that the real world is more complex than that. As has been noted, men and women, in aggregrate, do have gender-related biases in their interests (ask any advertising exec!), As for workplace culture, I've been in unpleasant ones that were dominated by males, and others that were dominated by females - IMO, the real problem there is ineffective management that allows destructive behaviour to sour the workplace atmosphere.

    Does 'bro culture' put women off of trying to participate in things? Certainly - some of us have the patience and sufficiently thick skin to cope with it and dive in anyway, others don't and either give up or don't apply in the first place. I've never seen it asked whether 'sis culture' ever puts guys off anything, and I'd be intrigued to know the answer (I'd be mildly surprised if it didn't).

    Is there any cultural bias involved? I'd be surprised if there wasn't some, but I also doubt whether it's strong enough to stop someone sufficiently interested in a subject to have the ability to enter IT as a profession - right from Ada Lovelace's time, women that develop a passion for IT simply go for it, and damn the naysayers. Conversely, the 'IT is a boys/mans thing' may well have encouraged numbers of men that don't really have what it takes to give it a go. One would hope that theyd get rapidly weeded out, but real-world experience suggests that a surprising number of them manage to survive - again, effective management would improve that.

    But overall though, so long as the hiring process is gender-blind, and so long as there is effective management to prevent/deal with the creation of unpleasant workplace culture of any kind, then there shouldn;t be a problem. Hiring quotas based on gnender are, IMO an inappropriate solution to a problem that migh not even exist to the extent that some seem to think it does.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong solution to the problem?

      "(presumably women won't create a women-hostile working environment)"

      I know there was a series of studies done in the states over job satisfaction that found there was a higher churn of female staff in women dominated work. The only reason it was noted was they'd expected higher churn amongst women in the 'hostile' male dominated areas, but the satisfaction scores were higher there.

      Why this would be wasn't investigated at that time, but it was noted as being something that might need such investigation as it could be that women do generate a more hostile working invironment.

      1. Pompous Git Silver badge
        Childcatcher

        Re: Wrong solution to the problem?

        there was a series of studies done in the states over job satisfaction that found there was a higher churn of female staff in women dominated work.

        A little over a decade ago, I enrolled as a mature age student at UTas. The intro philosophy course included a module on women's issues that I expected to be... anti-men.* To my surprise it dealt with how badly women treat other women. One wheelchair-bound feminist wrote of being pointedly ignored by her colleagues at a wimmins'-only gabfest. Cripples are deaf, right? Another of deliberate humiliation of female Mexican servants by their female employers. It was far more interesting and enlightening than I expected.

        * Back in the 70s a male friend and I used to take the kids from the local women's shelter to the beach to run and play. The women appreciated this very much. Then the feminazi-in-charge returned from the USA and we were no longer allowed to exercise our evil influence over the kids. Instead of running around releasing pent-up energy the kids sat in front of the TV all day and got yelled at for misbehaving.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mansplaining

    I always enjoy these threads where boys mansplain to women why there aren't more of them in tech, and then digitally bro-bump / high five each other with up votes.

    Oh, and then down vote any post challenging their assertion that it's just PC nonsense (see below).

    1. GrumpenKraut
      Angel

      Re: Mansplaining

      Have an upvote, bro!

    2. Steven Roper

      Re: Mansplaining

      I was tempted to downvote you 1) for being sanctimonious and condescending; 2) for resorting to the usual automatic buzzwordism ("mansplaining") and name-calling characteristic of your ilk; 3) for hiding behind an AC while you spout your bile.

      I decided not to downvote you because you don't deserve the pleasure of thinking the Reg community is that predictable. I downvote people who I think deserve it. People like you deserve nothing.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mansplaining

      "Mansplaining" heh. "bro-bump" le sigh.

      So would you care to enlighten us with your opinion?

      1. Steven Roper
        Joke

        Re: Mansplaining

        "So would you care to enlighten us with your opinion?"

        Hey, why are you encouraging him/her/xer/xim/it? What are you, some kind of masochist?!?

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm among those you people call 'minorities'

    And I find this offensive, they are basically saying that the interviewers are conscience of the race/gender of the interviewee. And I find this as endorsing and encouraging what was the original problem, not solving it!

    If I was hired by Intel, I would have been extremely happy and my confidence in my skills would have received a massive boost. But reading such a report would kill whatever boost my confidence has received! To be told that I might have been hired because of my race/gender is a confidence killer!

    I do hate to read/see that someone didn't get hired/promoted because of his/her skin colour; but I equally hate to read/see that someone did get hired/promoted because of his/her skin colour!

    P.S. Forgive my EngRish, it isn't my first language.

  15. Chez

    >And then of course there was Gamergate

    I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. It's a bad thing that a bunch of angry neckbeards tried to out journalists that were sleeping with devs and then giving their shovelware good reviews? There were plenty of women and minorities mixed in with the neckbeards, check #notyourshield for instance.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's amazing that they just can't figure it ou

    Is it so difficult to understand that many woman do not find tech such a rewarding career path?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cheap Female Labor? Are you kidding me?

    Women are able to write their own financial ticket now. Any savvy tech female gets that. The war for increasing female talent in tech means that women are now more highly sought after and therefore can name their price. Sorry guys.

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: Cheap Female Labor? Are you kidding me?

      Decades ago I read of female engineers on the sales side were making significantly more money than their male counterparts. Probably didn't stop them from complaining ;-)

  18. ZPO

    Stockholders...

    If I'm a stockholder, I want to know that the best qualified candidate who applied for a given position is extended an offer 100% of the time. I don't care what color their skin is, how the pray (or if they pray), who they love, where they were born, or how their plumbing is configured. All I care about is the qualifications and abilities of staff to efficiently generate revenue and thus profit. That is equality...

    This sounds like Affirmative Action and quota systems all over again. In the US, there is a good body of law rejecting quota based programs and differing standards based on race/creed/color/sex/etc - https://www.doi.gov/pmb/eeo/cases/reverse .

  19. MondoMan
    Trollface

    Maybe it's all just a diversion...

    A cynical observer might wonder if Intel's new attention to the sex and race of its employees might not be a result of Intel's recent performance declines in the market and the lack of prospects for significant improvement. That is, perhaps Intel's leadership is simply trying to distract analysts and observers from its failing business strategy.

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